Handful of Eternity
by RainingMonday
Summary: What if Addison hadn't come to Seattle? MerDer’s lives play out completely differently, but when their daughter gets cancer, Meredith discovers Derek's secret past and Derek must accept salvation from the very people who destroyed him. MerDer, Maddison
1. Happily Ever After isn't that easy

***~Handful of Eternity ~*  
_Happily Ever After isn't that easy_**

**So, my newest story, which for once doesn't have a song as a title. Oh well. Pairings are MerDer, Maddison, and other canon couples.**

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"_Long day," Derek commented as Meredith appeared in the lobby, shoulders heavy with tiredness but complimented by a smile at the prospect of their first official date._

"_Yeah," she agreed as he looked up from his laptop and she became irrevocably caught up in the beautiful sky blue of his eyes. Sleep was begging her to succumb to its insistent clutches but the mere sight of Derek Shepherd ignited feelings inside her that made her think the 'thousand mile' crap might have some merit after all._

"_Somewhere out there there's a steak with your name on it, and maybe a bottle of wine," he said with his trademark smile, and she lingered while he closed his laptop and gathered his things._

"_This is why I keep you around," she joked._

"_So we need to talk," he said. Talk. Talking never meant anything good, at least as far as Meredith knew. The second a man wanted to talk she started running full speed the other way._

"_Wine first, talk later," she countered, hoping that alcohol would make the words flow easier._

"_You trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?" Derek asked and she rolled her eyes playfully as she recalled how they met. Not that one night stands were uncommon for her, but two month follow ups to them were._

"_I think I like this rules thing," she said and he agreed as he helped her with her coat, sending shivers down her spine with the intoxicating scent of his cologne and the way his bluebell eyes focused on her, like she was the only person in the world despite that the hospital was teaming with frantic relatives and desperate patients._

_Meredith never meant to fall in love with Derek, and she certainly never thought he'd take her out on a second date, and then a third, and finally a fourth, until she couldn't remember how many dates they'd been on because he was a permanent fixture in her life. _

_Six months into their relationship Meredith discovered she was pregnant. Derek had been on a lot of mysterious phone calls and faxes so when he walked into the bathroom, she attempted to conceal the little blue stick. But he sat on the floor, refusing to move until he coaxed it out of her, and when he finally did his smile was so wide, threatening to split his face in half, and he hugged her so tightly she realized she never wanted him to let go._

_Madeline Emilia Shepherd was a textbook baby born in a perfectly normal pregnancy. Derek and Meredith told their friends and family (and the whole gossip-hungry hospital in general) when she reached twelve weeks; Derek felt her kicks right on time through Meredith's stretched, glowing skin. She occasionally scared him with her outbursts of emotion and demanded an unprecedented amount of sex during her second trimester. _

_Madeline was born around one o'clock on her due date, and put her mother through eight hours of grueling labor (Meredith swore it was more like forty) before emerging, eight pounds, 1 ounce, 20 inches with ten perfect fingers and toes. She reached all her milestones right on time, from walking to talking to smiling to potty training._

_Later they say they should have known. It was a little bit too perfect, and they would have accepted a few flaws instead of the buildup and chaos that resulted instead._

~*~

Giggles erupt from the pale rose room on the left as Meredith stalks carefully through the halls, bones aching under periwinkle scrubs that have seen one too many shifts. She knows her daughter will refuse to get in the bath unless she plays this game, however, and as all she really wants to do is fall into bed, she continues her lion-prance down on the hall.

She carefully pushes open her daughter's room and is bathed in soft pink light as she pads across the cloud-colored carpet towards Madeline's giggles, which are coming from under the bed. She pretends for a minute to search on hands and knees for the little girl before latching on to flailing legs and tugging the small two-year-old from under the bed.

"Aw, Momma," Madeline laughs, still struggling, laughing, pale jade eyes opened wide. "You wasn't s'posed to catch me!"

"Well, it's time for the little … what are you again today?" she asks, because keeping track of the various characters her daughter selects to portray and changes once a day as well as the surgeries she needs to master is definitely less than simple.

"A baby lion," Madeline states as she pushes dark, tumbling curls out of her face with delicate cream hands. "And you're Awex."

"Alex?" Meredith repeats in confusion, because last time she checked the resident dating Izzie didn't in any way resemble an African animal.

"From Madagadar," Madeline clarifies, or attempts to clarify as Meredith cradles the two-year-old against her hip and heads for the bathroom.

"Madagascar," she realizes with a small chuckle as she sets her daughter on the soft, fish-shaped carpet that kept little feet from slipping on the tiled floor. Madeline wrinkles her nose at the sight of the bathtub, and, for a second, Meredith thinks she looks exactly like Derek, though in reality the little girl looks more like her, except for the hair. Her dark brown curls, the color of pure cocoa before it is diluted, are really the only thing she has from Derek, and even so they are lighter than her father's, with just a hint of Meredith's honey blonde.

Madeline lifts her arms resignedly over her head so Meredith can tug the embroidered dress over her head, and then settles herself near the sparkly octopus that squirts water as she runs the water for the bath and pours strawberry scented bubbles inside.

Then she sits there and watches the little being she and Derek created, pondering how things have turned out. It's not that she blames Madeline for the change that has slowly taken place between her and Derek since her birth, it's just that things changed between them with a child, became more about responsibility than romance. Now something is broken, something she's unsure how to fix. They live in the same house, kiss each other on the cheek, but it's all centered on Madeline.

"Weady?" Madeline asks, pulling her from her reverie, and she summons a smile and places her hands on the child's hips and eases her into the kingdom of iridescent bubbles. The child squeals as toenails painted Kelly green hit the water, but Meredith's frozen, and she can only sit there, holding her daughter above the water as Madeline screams and kicks, yelling, "Momma!" to no avail.

All Meredith can see is the delicate trail of lavender bruises down her daughter's spine.

By the time Derek's key emits a welcome jingle in the lock, Madeline is screaming at the top of her lungs, flailing in Meredith's arms as she tries to swaddle her in a Cinderella towel and restrain threatening tears at the same time.

It is times like these that she feels like she's a terrible mother. She knows she's not, but Madeline's shrieks do little to assuage lingering doubt.

"Shh," Derek coos to the little girl, lifting her from Meredith's arms and tucking her against his shoulder before helping Meredith herself to her feet. "Don't cry, Madie," he whispers, and she wrinkles her nose at the nickname. "I know, I know," he laughs, "If you had wanted her to be called Madie you would have named her that."

When she doesn't answer, his teasing smirk melts into frantic concern. "Mer? Meredith, what's wrong?"

Her only answer is to carefully tug the towel down Madeline's back so Derek can see the bruises with his own eyes. "No," he breathes, and she hates that his mind goes there immediately as well. "No, that can't be right … Madie, honey, can you tell Daddy where you got these bruises?"

"Wha boo-boos Dada?" she laughs, throwing a wide smile full of tiny pearly teeth over her shoulder.

When Derek's fingers skate over the bruises with increasing pressure, Madeline shrieks, and this is the only answer he needs. He has her in her footie pajamas within seconds and into her car seat within the same minute, while Meredith trails behind, feeling like she might vomit, trying to remember if praying worked the last time she tried.

Sometimes it sucks to be a doctor.

And when Arizona's sky blue eyes meet theirs over an exam table a few hours later, they know by the tears pooling around her irises that their worst fears have been realized. Madeline has cancer. Acute lymphocytic leukemia.

~*~

So they become _those _parents, the ones who everyone looks upon with pity, the ones who spend more time in the hospital than not, the ones who look desperate, starved for a drop of ethereal hope. And she hates it, the stares, the pitiful smiles, even offers of charity.

Meredith doesn't think she's ever seen anyone throw up so much, not when Sadie had food poisoning when they were in Europe, not herself when she carried Madeline through a harrowing first trimester. Tears mixed with stinging bile leave Madeline's body at an alarming rate, and she thinks if her daughter asks for it to "stop" one more time, she'll lose it.

Sparkling My Little Pony stickers do not make an IV any more pleasant. A button-up shirt doesn't completely hide a central line. And a silk Hermes scarf from Grandma Carolyn doesn't make a bald head acceptable for a two-year-old who wants to decorate her head with silk bows and glittering clips.

Radiation therapy to the brain (as Madeline had indications of the disease in her central nervous system) follows induction and consolidation chemotherapy, and Madeline returns home briefly, in a haze of strawberry ice cream and a new bed with rosy pink sheets, to celebrate her remission. She and Derek celebrate a second honeymoon phase with tequila laced kisses and dancing in the kitchen.

But when she feels tiny, tugging hands on her lopsided pajama top, she instantly feels something is off. It takes her a minute to remember that her daughter's pajamas were not red when she put her to bed the previous night, but a pale sunshiny yellow instead.

All the way to the hospital, Madeline's nose doesn't stop bleeding, and until they receive the formal diagnosis, Meredith doesn't stop hoping until they hear the formal diagnosis: relapse.

So she watches her child grow skeletally skinny as her prognosis worsens and chemo does little to help. They are told she needs a bone marrow transplant, but neither her, Derek, nor any of her fourteen cousins are a match. She's slipping through Meredith's fingers like moonlight that will be extinguished with the coming dawn.

They search for a matched unrelated donor, but are told Madeline has a type of tissue that is difficult to match. So they drag their feet around helplessly until one January Izzie bursts into the small hospital room, her chocolate eyes glowing briefly with excitement until they are obscured by her having to bend over to breathe.

"Merry … late …Christmas," she pants, although all they can see is her bent-over form in periwinkle scrubs. "We found Madeline a donor."

"Actually," Arizona counters from the doorway as Derek and Meredith both stand, one Madeline's tiny, limp hands held in theirs, "we found her two."

~*~

Derek exits his OR at a full sprint after wresting off the gown-like cover he wears over his scrubs, sure that his perfectly styled curls are coming undone and willing to consider the look in his bluebell eyes might be frightening. Still, he disregards this and everything else around him – even the delicate crust of snow on the ground outside, the staff with eyes full of questions, the family of the man he just operated on. Karev will fill them in, he knows, and right now he can't think about anyone's family but his own.

Derek will learn to associate this very night with the uprooting of the simple life he's woven, with disturbance like ripples in a pond, with the return of a history he's banished so far from his mind, but he doesn't know it yet.

His daughter's bone marrow donors arrived that morning; they are being treated as family donors because they are friends of Nancy's.

He pulls the scrub cap from his head as he nears the conference room that serves as his destination. Through the glass walls, he glimpses, as he slows down from his run, two children with hands and noses pressed up against the glass, both with summer blonde hair like cornsilk. He pauses and grins at the little girl who is waving at him; she looks only a little older than Madeline and is wearing a mint green ruffled skirt his own daughter would die for. Beside her is her brother, dressed in khakis and a scarlet mockneck cable sweater.

Their dancing eyes, ice blue and twinkling, look too mischievous for angels, but he thinks he's never been grateful for anyone's conception, save of course his own daughter's. It's an awkward feeling to put into words but because these two kids are alive, his daughter will live too.

A baby tugs on the little girl's skirt, and she turns, blonde curls cascading increasingly slowly over her shoulder as his eyes follow her movement and the world gradually freezes around him. He's surprised his breath isn't misting out in front of him as it does on frostbitten days because if he's seeing what he thinks he is … if …

And he's running again, wrenching the door of the conference room open as he tells himself that waterfall of shimmering red hair does not belong to who he thinks it does. He throws it open and can only stare in agonizing, painful disbelief as the mother of his child, his ex-wife, and Richard regard him with surprise and incredulity.

It's so incredibly fucked up he can hardly breathe.

"Addison. What are you doing here?" it is only with a considerable amount of restraint that he keeps himself from using the harsher words that burn in up in his throat at the sight of her. She looks the same, a little older, still as gorgeous and regal as ever, but there's no doubt that the three children in the room are hers.

This is _impossible_.

"Well, you'd know if you bothered to answer any one of my phone calls," she quips, but he's pleased to see this has shaken her more than she's letting on, he can see her slender, perfectly manicured hands vibrating with shock and horror as she lifts the baby, holding her against her chest like a talisman against impulsiveness.

"What gave you the idea that I would _ever _want to speak to you again?" he hisses, fury lacing his voice as he glares, his face filled with as much contempt as he can muster.

"Maybe the fact that your daughter is sick, and Sommer and Brenner have leukocyte antigens that match Madeline's? Maybe it's that Madeline has one of the rarest combinations of HLA possible, and my children just _happen _to have the same one? But I don't know, Derek, why don't _you _explain it to _me_."

"Richard," Derek appeals, because he can't accept this, can't accept her, can't fathom that she has three children with someone that is not him. She shattered him, and in his mind, she doesn't deserve happiness.

"Your daughter is severely sick with leukemia, Derek, and we've been searching for a donor for months now," Richard says firmly in a voice containing disappointment, his muscled arms crossed.

"But -"

"Derek!" Meredith's voice cuts off the rest of his sentence like glass through vulnerable skin, "I don't know what the hell is going on here, or how you two know each other … but this is our daughter, Derek, our little girl! And she's … she's dying."

He sighs and reaches for her hand, which she offers reluctantly before settling her head against the hard plane of his stomach. "Of course I'm not going to let Madeline die, but I'd like to know … why the hell did it have to be you, of all people?" he addresses his ex-wife, watching as she flinches at his tone and digs snow white teeth into her bottom lip until she draws blood.

"Karma, I guess," a rough, sarcastic voice chuckles from behind him, and he doesn't need to turn to see who it is, turn to see his fallen brother, Cain to his Abel, to know.

"Mark's here?" he snarls at Addison, who is slumped in her seat, rubbing her temples, oblivious, in this minefield of shattered dreams they've resurrected, that the golden haired twins are tugging at her skirt.

Then it dawns on him, just as Addison whispers, "Mark is their father."

And before he can think, fury sends him over the edge and he turns and punches Mark with all the strength he possesses.

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**Thank you for reading! A review would really make my day! The outline for this story is pretty vague so I'm unsure how long it's going to be, but if you want more soon let me know ;). Next chapter will feature a little more backstory.**


	2. Who said pots were black anyway, Kettle?

***~Handful of Eternity ~***  
**_Who said pots were black anyway, Kettle?_**

**Thank you for the awesome response to the first chapter! I'm glad you're all interested in the story. This chapter features a prelude to Mark and Addison arriving in Seattle and the aftermath of Derek's actions. Enjoy :D**

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She stands queen over the winter wonderland of her backyard, knitted booties pulled up to different lengths on her legs, long johns just managing to keep her lower half warm. The hot chocolate in her hand radiates only so much warmth, but her children's laughs more than makeup for the frostbitten kisses the wind leaves on her cheeks.

"Look, Momma! I'm peein'" Brenner yells, snow flakes distributed like feathers throughout his gold hair, which is in need of a haircut. Her son is squirting the bottle of yellow snow dye from between his puffy grey snow pants, and she rolls her eyes, sure that Mark taught him that one.

"If you pee out here your bun-buns are gonna turn into an ice cube," Sommer retorts before Addison can say anything, and her little button nose is pointed in the air in regard to her brother, clearly under the impression that her red snow flowers are much more appropriate that her brother's antics.

"Brenner," Addison warns before the little boy can complain, and he pouts but discards the yellow dye in favor of blue, which he proceeds to squirt in Faye's direction. As wisps of strawberry hair are stained blue, Faye begins to cry. "Brenner, not at the baby," Addison scolds exasperatedly, because no matter what she does, Brenner still manages to find more mischief. Last month she was called out of surgery to be informed that her son had let the preschool class snake loose in the hallway because "he wanted to meet some new people."

"I'm just tryin' to make her more intresting," Brenner elaborates as the eight-month-old's wails wax in volume and arms adorned with adorable fat rolls flail in their cream parka covered coating. Deciding her child has had more than enough of the cold wet flakes frosting her small body, Addison lifts Faye and cradles her against one hip just as her phone rings.

"Addison Montgomery," she answers tersely while trying to button the last flower shaped disk of Faye's coat while keeping an eye on Sommer and Brenner. There is silence on the other end and Addison huffs in annoyance because really, she doesn't have time for this and Mark would have said something already and Savvy would have been chattering even before she pressed 'talk.'

A sob rips through the tenuous connection and Addison instinctively grips the phone tighter, her manicured nails digging into streamlined plastic and the navy, flower patterned hood of Faye's coat simultaneously. "Hello? Anyone there?" she queries.

"Addie," a voice gasps, and she think it's Nancy but she's not completely sure because the tone is so laden with sorrow. Instantly Addison's heart freezes because if anything happened to Nancy's kids or her other nieces and nephews … the ice makes east coast highways treacherous.

"What?" she asks urgently. "Nancy, what – are Logan and Tessa -?"

"It's Madeline," Nancy chokes, and Addison frowns, her mind conjuring up twelve little girls in two straight lines on the pages of the books Sommer makes her read every night. "She … she relapsed and she needs …"

"Slow down, Nance," Addison compels in a soothing voice while trying to calm the hammering of her heart in her chest. She feels something's missing; some intrinsic piece of life she's overlooked, but then again similar notions always assail her when she thinks of her ex-husband. "Who's Madeline?"

"Sommer and Brenner," Nancy continues, ignoring her. "You got them tested when Ryan had leukemia, didn't you? You have the detailed record of their HLA markers?"

Confused by the question, Addison frowns, remembering Ryan, a coworker's six-year-old who had died two months ago from the insidious potency of leukemia. "Yeah … I kept the records at the practice but they didn't mat-"

"I know," Nancy interrupts.

"Nance," Addison asks suspiciously. "Who is Madeline?"

"I need to see the records."

"Who -"

"Addison," Nancy snaps in a voice like shattered glass. "As your sister-in-law and your friend for more than fifteen years, I am telling you I need to see their HLA typing."

"Okay," she says, releasing the word in a cloud of miniature ice crystals that saturate the air. "Just - who is Madeline?"

"Derek's daughter," Nancy says, and then the line goes dead.

Her muscles are leeched of strength by that revelation, and she sinks into the nearest deck chair, regardless of the fact that it is covered in snow and that the instant she sits down, Faye begins to consume the white powder. Derek has a child. It shouldn't really be so surprising, she has three herself and after all, it's been four years.

But the wounds of her sin still fester, and much as she loves Mark Derek's forgiveness, or at least acknowledgement that she exists, is the only thing that will assuage the pain.

Faye erupts with a cry of pain as the ice stings her tender gums and Sommer and Brenner hurry over, puzzled little faces obviously on the verge of inquiring why their mother is sitting in the snow, with a look of utter shock, while their baby sister cries.

"Mommy?" Sommer asks, reaching out a mittened hand to touch Addison's still forearm. "Momma?"

"I think she has lockjaw," Brenner observes, brushing the golden hair that flips out around his ears out of his face. "Daddy says that's when people can't talk."

"Brenner? Do you think we has to call 911?" Sommer asks in a heartfelt voice and this finally rouses Addison, because her children should come first, not her thorny, unpleasant past with her ex-husband.

"Come on," she tells the twins, placing ushering hands on their upper backs. "We're going inside."

"Whatsa matter?" Brenner asks, but she discovers, when she looks deep into her son's rising twilight eyes, alight with honest concern, that she doesn't have an answer for him.

~*~

Three hours later all of them are sleeping, Faye against her chest, her gentle breath ruffling the fire colored curls and emitting the consoling scent of baby as she breathes. Addison shifts the ball of limbs covered in cupcake-patterned fleece as she tucks an embroidered couch pillow under Sommer's crooked neck. Brenner's head is against her thigh, cheek pushed up adorably while he snores in just a pair of dinosaur long johns.

She's waiting, because this is just too perfect, that Derek has the sick kid when she and Mark did wrong, and that the product of her first night of infidelity, the twins, will have to pay in blood and marrow for the sin she committed in making them.

Then the phone rings.

"Nancy?" she whispers urgently, pulling her son's hot chocolate from between limp fingers and taking a drink in the hopes she can pretend it's something stronger.

"Addison … they match," Nancy confirms as she contemplates their future, in some unknown location with her jaded ex-husband and his ex-best-friend, aka her current lover/boyfriend/baby daddy and four innocent children unable to understand their parents' transgressions.

"So …?"

"I'm faxing the tests you had done here to Madeline's pediatrician and oncologist, and, depending on how her disease is progressing, we may need further detail regarding their HLA types. I'll know in a few hours and … so … maybe you should come talk to Mark."

This is being decided for her, not with her, but she can't find the grounds to argue, especially because of enduring guilt. "Are you going to tell Derek?" she asks his sister, finally betraying vulnerability.

"No. Not yet. But Addison …"

"We'll do it. If they match and Mark agrees, we'll do it," Addison sighs.

~*~

An exhausting drive to the hospital, two blood tests, twenty minutes of relentless sobbing, and a couple Bob the Builder band-aids later, she sits with two tear-stained cheeks against each shoulder and a car seat at her feet, waiting for Mark to get out of a multi-hour facial reconstruction. Sommer and Brenner's blood will need to be tested again, compared with their almost-cousin's, and then the twins will need to be assessed to determine whether they are healthy and old enough to donate bone marrow.

Mark gets out of surgery sometime between a desperate cafeteria escapade and Brenner's latest fit and she's grateful for his scrubbed appearance in the doorway because she's exhausted and the kids aren't much better. He kisses the top of her head, lips lingering on strawberry strands, supplies Brenner with his plush Lightning McQueen, and cuddles his two daughters closely, distracting them with funny faces until she pulls herself together.

The waiting room on the pediatric floor of the hospital is bright, filled with vivid colors and sounds, but Addison doesn't feel any of it. Numbness pervades every inch of her body except where his hands knead coiled muscles skillfully, and slowly oxygen fills her lungs again.

He's her rock.

"What is it?" he finally murmurs into her hair as they watch their children interact, competing with another family to see who can build the highest block tower. Mark doesn't even interfere when Faye accidentally knocks down the competitor's creation and screams rise from the knot of youngsters, he simply waits.

"We have to go to Seattle," she tells him finally, and he just nods, trusting her, and her heart swells. Mark Sloan was never supposed to be this person for her but now that he is she fears she'll never be able to let go.

"Maybe. Well … probably," she amends. "In Seattle, there's … I just … we have to take Sommer and Brenner there," she states and she can taste tangy surprise emanating from him. "Derek has a … a daughter and she has cancer and …"

"They match," Mark supplies, with the same kind of bleak hopelessness in his eyes, and he pulls her close to him, her head tucked in the crook of his neck, and places butterfly kisses on her temple until she turns to jelly in his arms.

~*~

Mark Sloan never particularly enjoyed flying, although now for the life of him he can't understand why, because last time he boarded a six hour flight he didn't have three-year-old twins annoying the people behind him and picking inappropriate movies on the DVD players for rental. And he sure as hell didn't have a screaming eight-month-old who Addison is trying to breastfeed under one of the thin cobalt airplane blankets.

The last few days have been a blur of delegating patients, packing footie pajamas, and fretting about seeing the ex-best friend (or ex-husband, in some cases) again. He thinks he locked the back door but he's not sure and he remembers getting on the plane but not entering JFK in the first place. He doesn't fight it, though, because God or the universe or _something_ would have forced the three of them back to the same patch of land eventually anyway.

They make it off the plane and into the rental car and to Seattle Grace with the help of the GPS (which Addison argues heatedly with) and then they're in the lobby and the enormity of this is crushing him. His babies are going to have long needles inserted into the delicate crests of their hips to help the faux-niece he's never met because he screwed over his best friend.

"Mark," Addison intones with a bit of force and he figures it isn't the first time she's called his name. He blinks and looks up; discovering that Brenner is using his shoes as speed bumps for Lightning McQueen while Addison shakes hands with a pretty, slim blonde woman.

"Hi," she says when he pushes himself to his feet, "I'm Meredith Grey." She's beautiful, with small features arranged perfectly on her face, but sadness rests heavily on her brow, and her expression flickers when she spots Sommer and Brenner. "I don't know how to thank you for -"

"You don't have to," he hears himself say, unsure where it came from (callous is more his forte) but relieved when she smiles. Meredith offers to accommodate Addison, who wants to see Richard again, and he excuses himself to go get coffee after the flight from hell and after making sure his girlfriend is situated with their kids, strides off. He isn't sure whether he wants to see Derek or not, but his inquiring glances earn him odd looks from an Asian and a blonde at one of the nurses stations, whose whispers suggest they are talking about him.

Finally, a coffee in each hand, he receives directions to the conference rooms from an extremely nervous intern who stutters when he mentions his name and looks at him with awe. He finds it immediately because loud voices stem from the partially windowed space, Addison sounds nearly in tears and Derek uproariously angry. He lingers for a minute, not wanting to cause a volatile situation to explode, but he loses it when Derek snaps at Addison.

"_Of course I'm not going to let Madeline die, but I'd like to know … why the hell did it have to be you, of all people?!_"

"Karma, I guess," Mark chuckles from the doorway, because although their predicament is far from humorous, there's release in this, in Derek finally being forced to admit partial culpability because he's been the scapegoat for four years.

Derek turns on Addison, tendons flashing through his skin as he clenches his fists, and Mark barely restrains himself from grabbing his best friend. "Mark's here?"Derek says in a voice of utmost loathing, and Mark realizes he has no idea those blonde children in there share half his genes, half his smile, half his height.

"Mark is their father," Addison says softly, and the resignation, even if directed at someone else, stings a little, like ice flecks hitting his skin.

He barely sees Derek whip around and, with two hot coffees, can hardly defend himself as the boy who gave him half a sandwich in second grade turns on him, punching him and sending him sprawling as steaming coffee splatters the door with mocha drips.

And for a second, the world is still.

Until all hell breaks loose. "You punched Daddy!" Sommer shrieks at Derek, tears in her ocean-kissed eyes as she runs forward and presses her delicate head to his chest, as if trying to discern whether or not he's alive.

Brenner is right behind her, looking about to attack Derek, and Faye starts up a racket as Meredith screams, "What the hell was that, Derek?" and Richard restrains the neurosurgeon as Mark pulls himself to his feet, his black t-shirt clinging with moisture to his chest.

"He deserved it!" Derek roars in response, eyes blazing a dangerous sapphire as Richard personally escorts Mark from the room to get his face sutured while Addison rounds on Derek and Meredith scoops up the children. They're one fucked up quadrilateral and he realistically shouldn't have expected anything less.

~*~

"I can't believe you had his kids," Derek states flatly, furiously to Addison, who is wearing all black and screams Manhattan from head to toe. "_His _kids. That's rich, Addison. Real classy. I never took you for someone who would get knocked up by the dirty mistress, but of course I underestimated you in the area of vindictive evilness."

"You don't have the right to say anything anymore, Derek!" Addison retorts furiously, arms crossed over her ebony silk blouse. "Once you did, you had the right to be angry, but it's been _four _years! Four! If it wasn't for Nancy I wouldn't know if you were alive or dead."

"Well, I wish I knew you were dead."

"Real mature."

"You're Satan, in my eyes," he explains coldly. "Do you really think I want Satan around my daughter? Satan's spawn giving bone marrow to her? I realized when I had Madeline that you would make a terrible mother, Addison, and I'm _glad_ I never had kids with you!"

"I may have made a hell of a lot of mistakes," Addison hisses. "But don't you _dare _imply I don't love or care for my kids. I -"

"Yeah, because adultery is really a great prelude to impending motherhood!"

"Well, at least I'm actually home sometimes!"

"Just because I spent time at work doesn't mean you had the right to screw my bes -"

"Spent time at work?! You lived at work! You were married to work! I don't know why you ever married me because apparently fucking around with a scalpel was more important than coming home!"

"We're surgeons, Addison!"

"We're people first, Derek! You think I picked Mark to spite you? You think I wanted things to turn out like this? I love him; I fell in love with him!"

"YOU DO NOT LOVE HIM!" Derek bellows, "AND HE SURE AS _HELL _DOESN'T LOVE YOU!" The echo of the slamming door startles them both, but it doesn't keep Derek from striding from the room, unable to look at the redhead with her head in her hands, shoulders shaking delicately with harsh, aching sobs.

~*~

"Why is he suturing his own face?" George asks as Meredith approaches a nearby nurses' station, two sticky hands woven in her scrub top and a baby in her arms, whom she settles on the counter as she peers around for the source of George's inquiry.

"To turn me on," Cristina replies in a sultry voice, smiling lazily until she sees Meredith with three extra children. "What the hell? Did your kid multiply or something?"

She rolls her eyes with chary precision, because if she doesn't keep control of her body her tear ducts will overwhelm her and this mess will crash down, and she really can't afford to be dark and twisty right now. Later she'll succumb to the overturning of her life but now, she has to stay strong for Madeline and the two kids who will save her. "No. These are Madeline's donors."

Cristina, Izzie, Alex and George turn to appraise the children and Meredith finally gets a view of Mark, nimble fingers manipulating simple surgical instruments in ways she'd never deemed possible as a nurse holds the mirror for him. What is his connection to the gorgeous redhead _her _Derek is currently screaming at, and how did she not know of these intrinsic people to Derek before now?

"He's Mark Sloan," Alex informs Cristina. "He's like the go-to plastic surgeon on the east coast."

"When you guys are done scaring McSexy's kids …" Meredith trails off, amused, as Sommer and Brenner's doll-like faces and rain washed eyes look alarmed in the presence of the four other doctors, and latently realizes that the third child, who she has trapped against the counter with one arm, apparently finds it amusing to throw Pooh Bear animal crackers at innocent passerby.

"Oh," she scrunches her nose in the way Derek finds adorable, and then frowns as the face she has ingrained like a photographic memory surfaces along with a fresh wave of uncertainty and panic. "What's the baby's name again? Honey, you've got to stop that," she informs the infant, but of course Faye doesn't listen.

"McSexy?" Cristina asks skeptically.

"No," Meredith decides.

"McYummy?" Izzie suggests eagerly.

"No."

"McSteamy," Meredith suggests with a teasing, confident grin as the man in question exits, refusing the offer of pain meds as he makes his way over.

"Merdith?" a small voice asks somewhere near her hip, "What's a Steamy?"

* * *

**This seemed like a good place to end it considering what is going to happen next chapter. Feel free to tell me what you liked/didn't like and what you want or think is going to happen next, when Meredith finds out who Addison and Mark are to Derek. Please review and I'll try to get the next one up soon :)**


	3. Even Adam and Eve didn't fall this far

***~Handful of Eternity ~***  
_**Even Adam and Eve didn't fall this far**_

**So I feel we should clear a few things up that have been hinted at but not fully explained. Derek and Addison got divorced via phone and fax shortly after he found out Meredith was pregnant. He and Meredith are not married, just living together, and for now a little unsure where they stand in their relationship. Addison and Mark are dating. Also, Meredith & Co. are third year residents, Arizona's there, and Burke is still there. I think most of the other questions people had are explained this chapter.**

**Oh, and thanks for the wonderful reviews! :) Enjoy**

* * *

"Merdith?" a small voice asks somewhere near her hip, "What's a Steamy?"

"Uh, nothing, sweetie," Meredith assures the angel-faced Brenner as his father approaches, because the last thing she needs is for the son of Derek's apparent archenemy to know she gave him a hot nickname. That spelled 'unnecessary additional complications' loud and clear. "How's your face?" she asks Mark.

"Fine," Mark grumbles, his long fingers probing the skin just under the perfectly sutured line before accepting Faye's light, uncoordinated little body from her. He cradles the baby carefully, running a hand over the soft knit of her cream sweater dress, and his tender actions only serve to make Meredith more curious. "Thanks for watching them for a minute, by the way. Addie and Derek looked ready to kill each other and I had to take care of my face," he says with an accompanying smirk.

"Mark?" she ventures. "How do you know Derek? And why does he hate you and Addison?"

His eyes are like bleached denim when they meet hers, but other that pain encoded into her irises, she can discern little more. "I think … that's something you need to discuss with Derek," he says slowly in a gruff voice as one arm reaches behind his head to ruffle his hair.

She doesn't press the matter because Mark is clearly on thin ice with Derek and one wrong move could set off the fight left incomplete earlier. Her mind drifts to her daughter and guilt curdles in her stomach as she realizes she hasn't visited her little girl today. "Sommer, Brenner?" she asks. "Would you two like to meet Madeline?"

"I wanna meet Madeline!" Sommer gushes excitedly, unfathomably, her sparkly Mary Janes leaving the floor. "Please Daddy, can we? Please!"

"Sunny, it's not the one in two straight lines that always wears the yellow hat," Mark tells her gently, and her face falls a bit but she still looks eager at the prospect of a playmate. Her father's nickname for her amuses Meredith because Sommer is Madeline's sunshine, a ray of brightness, of luminescent hope to illuminate the darkness of cancer she walks in.

They stop outside to don the blue paper booties to wear over their shoes and to squirt sanitizing foam on their hands and it's painful when Brenner runs down the hall, shouting, "Look, Daddy, I'm walkin' on clouds!" because Madeline is too weak to run but Derek used to swear she'd be a track star.

Smiling bravely, Meredith leads the way to the decorated, cheerful hospital room in which her child sits, grasshopper legs crossed as her peridot eyes roam the pages of Barbie Swan Lake. The famous pink silk scarf reminds her of an African princess, and both Sommer and Brenner's eyes glow at the sight of all the toys.

"Hey sweetie," Meredith says from the doorway, hurrying forward to embrace the little being amongst cords and monitors. Madeline's brave smile just about breaks her heart because there are plum circles under her eyes and her skin is paper-thin, the result of the latest round of chemo. And yet she still smiles. Her child is going through hell and she smiles.

"I'm okay, Mommy," she states, setting the book aside and peering around at the people lingering uncertainly in the doorway, anybody who doesn't resemble a doctor is welcome is Madeline's room.

"Hey!" Sommer chirps, the first to break the delicate silence and enter the room. She discovers the slew of Madeline books on the nightstand, "My Daddy reads this to me every night! It's the where they take her pendix out!"

"My Mommy reads it to me too," Madeline replies, stick-skinny limbs arranged in way that make her vulnerability just that more poignant. Sommer, clearly having spent time in hospitals, isn't intimidated by the cords and monitors as other children are, she weaves her way over to Madeline and, with a few struggles make the pale green fairy skirt ride up tiny hips, plops down on the bed and turns beseeching eyes to her father.

"Daddy, will you read it? Daddy does a funny Miss Clavel voice," she explains to Madeline.

"I, uh, sure," Mark looks to her for reassurance but there's no protocol for this situation so he picks up the book in large hands and begins to read.

It happens sometime around Mark's high, girlish rendition of "Good night, good night, dear Miss Clavel!" that has sent Madeline, Sommer, and even Brenner (who maintained that it was a girl book and the only good character was Pepito) into a fit of giggles. The smooth, petal white curve of the strip of skin above Madeline's upper lip is suddenly stained a bright crimson, and although it is gone in a flash of pajama sleeve, panic assaults Meredith as she inhales jagged breaths.

Madeline finally notices when blood floods rose petal lips, her angelic face betraying surprise as she finds scarlet seeping over her skin. She gives a high shriek, and that's when Meredith sees it: a tear tinged pink. Madeline's leaking blood.

~*~

He's read that time was relative, that there is no real way to measure the progression of instances, the parade of events that stretch forever on, but hearing Einstein's theories is different than waiting for a latent diagnosis for your sick daughter. Derek doesn't think he's ever seen that much blood, and from such a tiny person, he doesn't know how she has any left.

But Sommer and Brenner do.

Instantly he feels guilty for the direction his thoughts automatically take, because Mark and Addison's twins are people and it's no more their fault that their parents committed adultery than it is his (in fact, it may be much more his fault but that's something he has yet to come to terms with). They have their own hopes and dreams and favorite colors and special TV shows they can't miss.

Everything takes a backseat, fades into the barely discernable distance, however, while his daughter's hangs in the balance. He's had no more than a few hours to process Mark and Addison's arrival, and while he knows he behaved rashly before, knows that Sommer and Brenner may be the only precious beings that can save his daughter's life, it doesn't make the encounter any easier.

He isn't ready for this, but he supposes that he never would have been anyway.

He's surprised they were able to pry Meredith away from Madeline but when he spots Cristina's hand around her forearm, tendons tight in her wrists; he understands that she didn't leave that room willingly.

"Seriously, Mer?" Cristina snaps brusquely as he approaches, "Stop it with the McMommy. You're not helping Madeline right now, or yourself, or me, so maybe you should -"

"It's not my fault you spent the night with Burke in an on-call room," Meredith responds, but the answer is flat, empty, lifeless.

"Well, it's not my fault that you're being all dark and twisty and 'I can't screw McDreamy's brains out because my daughter is si-'"

"I've got this," Derek intercedes, placing hands on delicate, periwinkle-clad shoulders that have become too skeletal over recent months. Meredith doesn't protest as he leads her gently away and into the nearest on-call room. The tension is palpable, though, nearly tangible, it tastes of sour secrets.

"Who are they, Derek?" is her first question once she's curled on the bed, limbs coiled impossibly tight. "Who are Mark and Addison?"

He's evaded this conversation for four years while it's been eating at him and now he feels he'll pay the price for his silence. He loves Meredith but right now their relationship is dangling from delicate strings that more emotional upheaval could easily tear.

"Addison and I," his lungs inflate, "were married. When I lived in New York."

"Married?" she returns, her face painfully blank.

"Yes. For eleven years."

"Do you love her?"

"I – what?"

"Do you love her, Derek?"

"Do I – Meredith, what about me calling her Satan the instant I saw her indicated to you that I'm still in love with her?" Derek asks, meeting Meredith's eyes and willing her to understand that she's the only one who occupies his heart in that way.

"You're mad at her, but that doesn't mean you're not in love with her. You screamed at her, Derek. I've never seen you that mad before, and well, you wouldn't do that if you didn't care," she sighs, a few butterscotch waves falling onto her face, obscuring her melancholy expression. "Jealousy is a powerful emotion and -"

"She slept with Mark," Derek interrupts. "Addison slept with Mark while we were married. I came home one night and things felt … different. I won't lie and say that I knew because I didn't, at least until I found  
Mark's jacket, Mark, who was my best friend. I almost didn't believe it then, but I walked in on them in _our _bed while she moaned _his _name and he was inside _her_."

He notices a few tears making their way down Meredith's shapely cheeks, but he doesn't stop because if he does he might never start again. "I left, packed my stuff and never came back. I was mad at her for a long time, but when I met you … you were a breath of fresh air, a reason for me to live and breathe and laugh again. You were everything I never knew I wanted. I divorced Addison, without a second thought, when we found out about Madeline."

"I … I don't know what to say, Derek," she whispers. "Why didn't you just tell me? We've been together for almost four years and you didn't trust me enough to …"

"It was never about trust, Mer. It was about me trying to forget that life."

"If you forgot it, though, why were you so angry? Why did you punch Mark?"

"It was shock, I guess," he muses as stubbled cheeks glide over smooth surgeon hands. "Seeing them, after all that time … and I was jealous. Not that Mark is with Addison, but that they have three perfectly healthy kids and this cute little _family _while our child dies. It isn't fair."

"Life isn't."

"Yeah."

"You're more dark and twisty than I thought," she teases, "Cristina would be proud."

"Yes, because I live to please Yang. Are we really joking about this already?"

"I don't know. I can't … I can't process it. Not while Madeline's …"

"She'll be okay," Derek soothes, sliding hands over her haphazardly arranged limbs because he always knows, always can sense when she needs him. She gazes at the bunk on top of them while he cradles her, knowing they aren't all right, not yet, but that cancer places everything else in limbo so they can pretend for now.

"Derek?"

"Hmm?"

"Distract me," she murmurs, voice raw with sorrow and longing, and he doesn't hesitate before pressing his lips to hers, joining mouths and tongues in a subtly crafted dance. Her lips taste slightly of salt as he kisses her, gently but passionately, leaving them both gasping for air. He's never sure where they stand but for now he's threading fingers through caramel silk and it feels so right he can't stop.

He manages to get palms under her scrub top to trace patterns over her ribs before their pagers begin shrill cries simultaneously, calling them elsewhere.

~*~

"She needs the donation sooner rather than later," Arizona informs the four adults outside the room, their worried faces illuminated by the dim light spilling from the room in which three children slumber. "Within the next week would be best."

"Which type of donation does Madeline need?" Addison inquires as she bounces Faye gently on one hip, hand gently stroking the baby's curls, unwilling, even in sleep, to relinquish the child she still has a hold of. Madeline claims a part of Sommer and Brenner now, a part that was offered, but something she cannot protect them from nevertheless, but Faye is still hers.

"I would prefer to draw the marrow straight from Sommer or Brenner's hipbones," Arizona states, "but as that requires surgery, I think peripheral blood stem cells would work almost just as well."

Derek runs a hand through his perfectly coiffed thatch of coal curls, momentarily obscuring his face from view. "Shouldn't we do what's best for Madeline, though?" he argues in an exhausted voice and sympathy blossoms in Addison. She's worried for the twins, but once the pain clears, they'll be just as vibrant and healthy as they are now. Madeline, on the other hand …

"I don't want to put a three-year-old through an unnecessary surgical procedure," the pediatric surgeon explains. "It's risky enough with an adult, but for a toddler …"

"Why did you say you preferred to draw straight marrow, then?" Meredith asks.

"Because of Sommer and Brenner's size, even with an injection there's no guarantee that I'll be able to get enough stem cells from their blood. Also, since their veins are so tiny, I'll have to put a central line in through their neck, which can cause complications, including infection, as the two of you have experienced with Madeline's central line."

Addison feels her body beginning to sag, but before her muscles completely give up on her Mark catches her, cradling her against his chest. She catches a flash of indigo fury as Derek glances their way, but she cannot find even a drop of discretion inside her, she's losing it and Mark has always been the one able to catch her without breaking anything on impact.

"So," Mark says with a sharp inhalation, "we're doing the peripheral stem cell donation."

"Yes. I'll need to examine Sommer and Brenner to determine who will be doing it. They have the exact same HLA proteins, but if one of them has a cold or minor illness it would probably be best for them not to donate," Arizona says. "If it works out for the two of you I can do it now."

She knows December dawn eyes seek her approval, but she doesn't look at Mark, only holds Faye closer. "Now is fine," he tells Arizona resignedly, knowing, that if it comes to laying blame, he'll be the one held responsible, and Addison orchestrated it as so on purpose.

Rousing little bodies dowsed in slumber is far from easy, but at least the decision is made before the almost appointment starts with Brenner sneezing in Arizona's face when she lifts the heavy-eyed boy to take him into the exam room. "Sorry Dr. Zona," he mumbles, fists rubbing 'sleep sand' from eyes the exact blue color of robin's eggs.

"Don't worry about it, buddy," the blonde doctor reassures, "You just made my decision a lot quicker."

Sommer is perfectly healthy. She hates herself for hoping otherwise.

As a child she was stranded in the midst of deception as her father carried out affair after affair and her mother drank honey-colored liquid like she'd been starved for days. Her childhood was a finely woven fallacy of pretenses and lies and she swore, when she became a mother, that she would do things differently. Santa Claus was one thing, but outright deception still had to power to make her just as nauseous as it had the first time she saw her father kiss another woman.

So she doesn't know why she's sitting on an exam tale, limbs illusorily calm as she maintains the façade of tranquility. Sommer is on her lap, creating a warm spot on her shoulder where her cheek meets Addison's skin, fingers tangled in the pearls that adorn her neck.

Outside the door, a nurse prepares a filgrastim injection, measuring the right amount of the drug to be released under the flimsy covering of Sommer's ivory skin. The child is oblivious, content on her lap, trusting her as a mother to keep her safe.

She's going to betray her. Today and tomorrow and the next day and the day after because she needs one shot per day to prep her to donate blood to Madeline.

Mark squeezes her hand.

"Sommer," she whispers brokenly, "Mommy needs you to stay very still in a minute, okay? Can you do that for me?"

"Why, Momma?" the little girl responds absently, eyes wide and trusting.

"I just … I just do," Addison mutters into flaxen curls as a nurse backs into the room, needle in hand, and Mark swabs the crook of her daughter's elbow with alcohol. The pungent scent penetrates her nostrils as she glances behind her to where Brenner hands Faye toys to bang on the floor, unaware, to where Derek and Meredith linger a few feet away, both clearly unsure if they're supposed to be present.

"Ready?" the nurse murmurs and Addison nods, and all might have went well if Sommer hadn't jerked curiously in Addison's arms, straining to see the object of the adult's focus.

She screams when she sees the needle, shattering Addison's heart with her shrill cries, and Sommer tries to wiggle free but she instinctively clutches her tighter to her chest, wanting to protect her from this simple skin puncture and all that will follow.

Mark is busy whispering in Sommer's ear, trying to calm her, so Derek moves to her side, carefully cradling one miniature arm so the needle can be inserted safely. Feeling new hands on her skin, Sommer screams louder, tears pouring down her cheeks as she sobs, and suddenly Addison hates herself.

"Stop! Stop. I can't do this."

* * *

**Cliffhanger. Heehee, sorry. I will for sure try to get the next chapter up sooner, I'm sorry this one took so long. Blame school. I think there'll be a few flashbacks next chapter. How does that sound? And maybe a little smut. Hmm. I'll think about it ... review? ;)**


	4. Super glue wasn't invented for hearts

***~Handful of Eternity ~***  
_**Super glue can't exactly fix up hearts**_

**I don't really have much to say, except for the crossover killed me and for a while, I couldn't write anything. But I still have hope, which is a long, rambling story you prolly don't want to hear right now.**

* * *

Sommer's chest is still rising and falling rapidly, but it is the cool air, perhaps, that has cooled the tears on her face, making them fall slowly and causing Addison to shiver when they drip onto her chest. One hand is woven through her daughter's mussed pale sunshine curls (it's been forever since they've seen a brush, much less a bed) and the other is holding the small body to her as tightly as possible without strangling the child.

"_I can't do this_," she'd said before wiggling out of Mark and Derek's protective grasps, hurrying through the halls of Seattle Grace to the diaphanous strands of whispered rumors until she reached the outside. They haven't found her yet, although the tip of Sommer's sloped nose has turned strawberry pink with cold.

It's not that she doesn't want to help Madeline, because despite only a glimpse of dark hair and rushing blood from outside the girl's room, she sees Derek's nieces and nephews, some of whom she delivered herself. But the intrinsic instinct to protect her child is more powerful and heady than anything she's ever known and difficult to overcome with just pure logic. She doesn't want Madeline to die and she doesn't want Sommer to hurt, and somewhere in between something has to give.

She feels his presence even without turning to see those perfectly coiffed midnight curls, the temples of which are now frosted with silver, and the soulful blue eyes that used to cause her to swear on eternity. She still knows him, because eleven years aren't nothing.

They allow snowflakes to decorate heads of fire, light, and onyx for a few more minutes before he speaks. "I'm sorry," he offers, but she doesn't answer. Sommer shifts in her arms.

"Sorry about what?"

"I'm sorry that she has to hurt to make Madeline better. I'm sorry they matched."

"You're not sorry," she refutes. "Your daughter is going to live because they matched. You're sorry because you're worried that now I won't let Sommer and Brenner donate blood to Madeline. _That_ is why you're sorry."

He doesn't deny it. "I shouldn't have said those things."

"You meant them."

"No I … I was in shock, Addison, I couldn't think. Seeing you with him, it was like the night I left. I couldn't look at you." Derek runs a hand through his hair, and she feels his eyes on the back of her neck, but she still doesn't turn. "You're not Satan. I don't hate you and … and it's hard to look at you and Mark. But none of this has been easy."

She finally turns, icy sky dancers swirling around her as their eyes meet. She finds contriteness there, regret, sorrow, anger, nostalgia, emotions that match the ones she conceals on the inside. This is Derek, Derek whom she's known for seventeen years, Derek who swept her off her feet, Derek who pushed her to the breaking point in their marriage. She isn't in love with him anymore, but she does care about him.

"You might have to hold her," she whispers. "I don't know if I can watch."

He moves awkwardly, as if to hug her, but at the last second doesn't. "I'm sorry things ended up this way."

"I'm sorry too."

~*~

_She lay in the bed, wondering if she had any insides left, or if the baby had taken all of them with her on her journey out of her body. Her entire frame ached, a strange kind of soreness, not exactly as if she'd ran several miles, but not like she'd taken a beating either._

_Derek hovered over where they wiped her baby girl free of the remains of the placenta and amniotic sack, and his scrub covered back (he'd ran straight from surgery) obscured her view. The child's cries had quieted slightly, but she could still hear oxygen being taken into healthy lungs._

_As if able to detect her gaze, Derek looked over his shoulder and she thought she's never seen a face so full of joy. She gave him that, that precious little being to hold, that small girl to nurture, to tie satin bows in dark curls, to steady on a bike until she could balance on her own._

'_I love you' Derek mouthed, just as one of the nurse announced, "Eight pounds, one ounce, and 20 inches long. Congratulations Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Grey."_

_Then the little bundle of pink was placed on Meredith's chest for a first time, and she ran a finger over one seashell eyelid as her child squirmed, huddling into her warmth. Motherhood wasn't something that her childhood had prepared her for, but now, as she held her daughter against her chest and marveled in her perfection, she was suddenly sure she'd do whatever it took to give her baby a different childhood._

_She never figured on the things she'd be unable to provide, unable to save her from._

_Derek kissed their little daughter's forehead so tenderly she might have been made of the most fragile glass, and then he met her eyes before joining their lips. A brief rush of passion filled Meredith as their mouths collided, but Derek pulled away an instant later, apparently unable to keep his eyes off them._

"_What do you want to name her?" he asked softly, tucking a strand of damp golden hair behind her ear._

"_I …" she considered the list of names taped to their fridge, added to almost daily by Izzie but only by Cristina when she thought nobody was looking, even by Alex, but none of those names seemed to fit. "I like Emily, but I don't know that I want it to be her first name. There's a lot of Emily's."_

"_For her middle name, maybe," Derek suggested. "Or Emilia, that was my great aunt."_

"_I know you have a name," she teased. "Don't hold out on our kid."_

"_I would never," he vowed, tracing one curved cheek with a dexterous surgeon finger. "Madeline?"_

"_Madeline," she tasted the melodious syllables. "Welcome to the world, Madeline Emilia."_

~*~

The ruby marker skates across the page in Madeline's tiny hand, creating a wobbly oval. Pearly teeth sunk into her lip, Madeline throws the red aside and selects grass green in its place, carefully swirling the tip in circle until two uneven dots appear. She adds a curved yellow slash. A triangle nose.

"That's pretty," Meredith observes from the cushioned chair she stole from dermatology (apparently skin care patients got the comfy chairs) that has become a permanent fixture in Madeline's room.

"Isth you, Momma," the little girl informs her, adding pink hair, and Meredith hopes she hasn't gotten into her old high school yearbooks before remembering that she hasn't been out of the hospital in months. "Next I's gonna draw Daddy and Sommer and Brenner and Issie and Tina."

As if Madeline's words have summoning powers, the two doctors appear a few seconds later and the ICU slides open to admit them. "Hey, Madie," Izzie greets cheerfully, flopping down on another, less comfortable chair with a chocolate muffin in one hand. "Oh, sorry, Madeline," she corrects when she catches Meredith's glare. "Hmm. My muffins are much better than this."

"Nobody cares, Martha Stewart," Cristina quips, still standing, one hand fluttering against her periwinkle scrub pants as she periodically checks the door. Meredith raises her eyebrows, causing Cristina to sigh heavily. "I'm hiding from Burke," she admits.

"Do you ever do anything else?" Meredith asks.

"I do surgery with him. And I sleep."

"Also with him," Izzie adds.

"Hello? Kid in the room!" Meredith reminds them, although her daughter is oblivious, Derek already has a block-shaped square for a head and curly-Q's for ears. Then, because Cristina will fidget until she asks, and then likely not answer her, which is apparently irrelevant, she asks, "What about Burke, Cristina?"

"Oh, he's just being all couple-y. Usual Burke crap. I want to hear about Derek's closet skeletons," she says, stealing one of the animal crackers left in here by Faye earlier. It's strange, Meredith thinks, that her entire life has changed in a day. Derek was married. His ex-wife's kids are helping Madeline. Addison cheated on him. He never told her."

"Does everyone know about that already?" she moans morosely.

"No. But Derek's outside with the redheaded she-devil and McSteamy is chasing that kid Brenner because he stole four boxes of rubber gloves but has yet to make a balloon out of one and now they've got his drool all over."

"Derek was married to her. Married! I mean we've talked about," Meredith gulps, her chest tightening as she thinks of Derek, all that might have been and all that might still be. She knows why he hasn't proposed yet, because Madeline's illness has devastated them, and she is torn between wanting to claim him as her own and being afraid he'll run away.

"We've talked about it. He never told me. Now he has this perfect ex-wife with these three perfect kids who are going to save my daughter."

"You said ex-wife," Izzie observes. "So they're not married anymore. What happened?"

"She cheated on him with Mark." She watches as Madeline adds a small figure to her picture, one with a sun for a head. Sommer. "I mean I get it, Mark's hot, but then I don't get it. Derek's, well …"

"McDreamy," Izzie and Cristina supply at the same time, and then look at each other, disgusted.

"Who cheats on McDreamy? I mean, I know I'm not married to him and he's not perfect, but I have raised a child with him and I just can't imagine why …"

"There are two sides to every story," a voice says from the doorway, and they all turn in time to see Addison, mascara a little fuzzy, with Sommer in her arms, before the redhead walks away.

~*~

_It's not the right time, she told herself, to justify her next downfall, her latest self-inflicted tragedy. It wouldn't work. He thinks he wants to be a father now, but he has no idea._

_The taxi pulled up to the curb and she descended the brownstone's steps toward it, feeling as though he were looking over her shoulder but knowing it was just the guilt talking. He was at the hospital, performing a facial reconstruction that would take hours. That was why she was doing this now._

_He'd get bored. He'd leave. It's better this way …_

_She was impeccably dressed, so she could pretend that being put together on the outside would force her insides to conform, but it wasn't true. She stepped into the cab, willing herself not to throw up._

"_Where to, Red?" the cabbie inquired in what she judged to be an Irish accent, slowly turning New York. She gave him the address mechanically. They were silent for a couple blocks. If she opened her mouth, she might have told him to turn around._

_A baby. Her baby. Their baby, in a Yankee's onesie, one minute with his hair, the next with hers._

"_You're awfully quiet," he observed, but she didn't respond. "It's all right. If it doesn't bother you, though, I'll talk. Something to fill the silence." She didn't answer._

"_My daughter learned to walk last week. She's been standin' forever but then, all of the sudden, last week she just took that first step, and then another, and another. You have to take things one step at a time, you know. You have any kids?"_

_Yes. "No," she choked._

"_Well, I wasn't too sure about being a father at first. See, we didn't exactly plan it, and I wasn't into that whole scene. But it changed me. Kids do that to you."_

"_Yeah," she whispered, but wondered, could Mark?_

"_Never done anything better in my life. I loved her mother and I love that girl. But you're probably tired of hearing about that. How's about them Yankees?"_

_She was able to tune him out until they pulled up to the clinic and her heart lurched uncomfortably. She had tried to convince herself that this was the only way, but what if it wasn't? She had forbidden herself to feel even a scrap of emotion, save sorrow, for this baby, but now tears pooled in her eyes._

_If she hadn't known what it was, she wouldn't have guessed that it was an abortion clinic. It was an upper class women's health care clinic, where you paid for privacy and seats that were cushioned but didn't make the dreadful waiting any better. The atmosphere was tense, as the cabbie had just realized he had talked for five minutes about his child to a woman about to have an abortion. She didn't blame him, though. He seemed like the kind of person who deserved a child._

_She should have asked him to a stop a few blocks before, but she didn't think of it._

_She gave him a wan smile as she handed over several crumpled bills, and he nodded at her as she climbed out, but she saw the haunted look behind his irises, the look of someone who had almost made a terrible decision but backed out at the last minute._

_She stood in the crisp New York air. An autumn leaf blew up and brushed her calf. She lifted her phone to her ear._

_Five minutes later, a taxi pulled up. It was him again. "Changed my mind," she said by way of explanation._

~*~

She supposes they must have checked into the Archfield, because she sees the outline of the card key in Mark's pocket as he bends down to press a kiss to Sommer's cheek where salt still stains the milk white skin. The cotton candy pink of Cinderella collides with the misty blue of Wall-E as Brenner drapes an arm across his twin's stomach, as if he can prevent another nightmare like today from occurring in her life. They fight, like all siblings, but as she was told by the nurse who helped deliver them, twins have a special bond.

Tiptoeing, so as not to wake the sweetly slumbering Faye, Addison slips into the adjoining room and sinks gingerly onto the duvet, her limbs betraying no movement once she's established her statue-like charade. Mark enters a few minutes later, but she doesn't raise her eyes from the wall, doesn't move a muscle when he discards his dress shirt and fumbles around for his pajama pants.

"Addie." Fuck. He's always been able to read her. "Addison. Don't do this to yourself."

"This is fucked up, Mark. We shouldn't have come here."

"Please stop it with the self-loathing. It kills me to see you hurting, Adds, and you have to stop feeling guilty."

"Don't tell me what to feel about cheating on my husband."

"I can and I will, because I held you for nights before anything happened in that huge bed with that stupid airy canopy thing you insisted on having. I wiped every single tear away from your face and told you it was going to be okay. We all messed up but I love you, Addison. You don't need to feel guilty about that."

She has seconds to appreciate how he always knows what to say, the gruff longing with which he presents it to her, before her lips crash down on his and he has her completely intoxicated. Sometimes, she's worried she'll die at the brink of ecstasy because she can't breathe in his arms, with his kisses like soft petals falling against her neck.

He scoops her into his arms. She crushes her body to his and holds on tight.

She loses her shirt by the door of the bathroom, one foot resting on the white tile as their tongues collide, her other knee hitched around his hip as he presses her into the doorframe. She inhales deeply as his fingers skim the delicate cream of the skin underneath her ribs and they trade heated breath.

He has the flimsy skin of her collarbone between his teeth while she fumbles with his belt buckle and he unclasps her lacy black bra, pulling it slowly down her arms and drinking her in as he does. The rest of their clothes are shed somewhere between the sink and the shower but she can't exactly remember where because one hand is tracing patterns down her spine as he eases her into the pounding water, and the other is hovering at the inside of her thigh, teasing her with gentle touches.

Addison falls into him as the water pours over their bodies and he kisses her heatedly, knowing that she's ready but unwilling to acquiesce just yet. Here, with Mark, she's Addie, a woman who's allowed to be screwed up because he won't judge her, a woman who's allowed to have faults because he has them too.

"Look at me, Addison," he commands, and as her eyes meet his, steely grey with lust, he joins their bodies and they find a rhythm under the falling droplets.

~*~

Winter sunlight, the color of stardust strewn across the sky, seeps into the room and wakes him slowly, gently pushing away sleep's lingering fingers. Meredith's head is pillowed upon his shoulder, and Madeline is asleep a few feet away from them on her bed. They've all learned how to sleep to the beeping of machines.

He doesn't know what today will bring, whether he'll be able to keep Sommer still long enough to steal just a bit of life to save his daughter, he doesn't know what a new day will mean in his and Meredith's relationship and the revelation of his ex-wife. But for today, they're all alive.

A soft rapping on the glass outside pulls him into a sitting position and Arizona's delicate face, framed by sunflower hair, appears on the other side. She beckons to him and he quickly detangles himself from Meredith and gives her a quick kiss on the forehead before heading out into the hallway. Already his body misses her warmth as he braces himself for what is to come. His daughter will suffer. He'll see Mark kiss Addison. He'll hope Meredith will forgive him. He'll watch their sickly twisted triangle gain another dimension.

"Derek," Arizona begins hesitantly as his heart plummets, because good news doesn't cause uncertainty. "I … I don't think the peripheral stem cell donation is going to work. Sommer will have to have four more days of injections, and then blood taken on the fifth, _if _her parents are able to get to her to cooperate. By that time, Madeline will be in even worse shape."

"What are you saying?" Derek rasps.

"I need you to get Mark and Addison to agree to the bone marrow donation surgery."

* * *

**So I'm glad that people are enjoying this and alerting it. Srsly. But I'd love a few more comments, even just little ones. The next chapter is already in the works (including a big MerDer scene), but how fast I get it up depends on motivation.**


	5. You can get sutures but it still stings

**_*~ _Handful of Eternity ~*  
_You can get sutures but it still stings_**

**So I was a little faster at updating this time, but I'm not sure when the next one will be because of finals :d**

* * *

It's only been a day, and already old scabs are bleeding.

Derek doesn't think they could get four more intricately connected people to sit at a table if they tried, unless perhaps they overturned history and resurrected Oedipus and his twisted counterparts. Mark's arm is tucked around Addison's shoulders as she uses his chest as an anchor instead of the back of her chair, and it doesn't cause little stabs of anger because he still loves her, but it is weird to see them so intimate with each other when he remembers all the times he left them alone in New York, all the times he trusted them.

Mark looks confused, he can read those stormy blue eyes after thirty years, and his lips are puckered, as if puzzling over some difficult medical conundrum. Addison, meanwhile, is tapping stiletto against the floor nervously. Meredith keeps checking her watch; Derek knows she is eager to go see Madeline.

"_What are you saying?" Derek rasps._

"_I need you to get Mark and Addison to agree to the bone marrow donation surgery."_

If it was for anyone else, Derek would've long ago abandoned his nigh impossible mission, but it's for his baby girl who deserves to run again through summer grass and come inside sneezing from slight allergies, who should have a chance to see her mother try to hold back tears on her first day of preschool while she dipped ready fingers into pots of paint.

Addison had reluctantly left her kids in the not-so-able hands of Cristina (apparently Meredith thought it best not to mention that the only resident available for babysitting didn't like children) and so here they sit, reinventing the word complicated. A shape with this many angles and twists is never explained in geometry.

"We need to talk to you," he says, able to keep his voice from intensifying with anger, pain, and desperation, but only barely.

"We're here, Shep. Talk," Mark challenges, crossing forearms across a chest that ripples with muscle. His glance at Addison explains everything, though – he's protecting her temporarily fragile exterior. A second later he's a little appalled he can still read his betrayers so well.

How's he supposed to say it, though? We want your daughter to undergo surgery and risk her life to save ours? That's the truth stripped of all pretenses, all emotions, all implications.

Meredith begins, and Derek squeezes her hand gratefully under the table of the conference room. "Dr. Robbins is worried how much time it will take to give Sommer the filgrastim injections. Since yesterday didn't work, she still needs five days of them, plus the actual donation, and Madeline is … not doing well."

"What are you saying?" Addison whispers.

"To even do the injections, we might have had to sedate Sommer anyway," Derek says in what he hopes is a soothing, reasonable voice. "This isn't that much different, and it's completely safe …"

"You want her to have the surgery," Addison states blankly.

"Yes."

"She's three, Derek! Fucking three year olds aren't even supposed to donate in the first place. Now you want her to have surgery? After you punched me, called Addison Satan, and ran around this hospital acting like you're the goddamn victim?!" Mark boomed, leaning dangerously across the table at his ex-best-friend, but Addison's gentle grip on his forearm tugged him back.

"So now the adulterous, seducing bastard is the good guy?" Derek snaps back, incensed.

"Derek," Meredith mutters urgently while Addison simultaneously implores, "Mark."

"That shoulder matter," Meredith speaks up firmly, meeting all three of their eyes, those who were once best friends, inseparable, the Three Musketeers. "The past is bad. Really, really, bad and I don't know everything that's happened … but that shouldn't matter. Madeline is dying. Addison, Mark, you have to decide whether you're willing for Sommer to have a surgery that, while routine, could potentially put her life in danger. That's what you're deciding. Not whether it's justified, not whether Derek deserves it."

Derek slips an arm around Meredith's shoulders as a shaky breath tears through her small body. She still amazes him, even four years later, even in the face of her daughter's illness or her mother's insults; she maintains a backbone of steel. He catches his pseudo brother's eye briefly but that Adriatic blue is no longer easy to decipher.

Slowly, Mark turns to look at Addison, deep into her eyes while she stares into his, and he's about to interrupt before he realizes they're _communicating_. Not talking, yet they don't need privacy in order to share clandestine thoughts. An eternity elapses in a span of sixty seconds.

"Okay," Addison says finally. "Okay – but me and Mark want to be in the operating room, and you have to get the best surgical team in this whole hospital, and …"

"We have a no family policy," Meredith interrupts, almost inaudibly. "I'm sorry. But I'm sure," she quickly continues when they watch anguish wash across Addison's face, "that Derek can be in there. Can't you?"

"Of course," he reassures in a thinly veiled attempt at confidence, because his presence won't prevent anything – he won't be doing the procedure.

~*~

It is analogous to graduating med school, she thinks, except for the lingering dread. She should be ecstatic - her daughter, because of this donation, is most likely going to live. But she's being plagued by the instincts that nearly kept her in bed the day the patient with the bomb was admitted, the senses that warned her as she sank below the waters of her bathtub the time the ferry crashed.

Still, she smiles as Cristina sprints off to change scrubs dotted with spit-up and Brenner grins innocently when his father asks where George's pager went. She leaves when Addison tearfully informs Sommer that she will not be able to eat breakfast like her brother and sister at the hospital cafeteria because she's having a special doctor thing today. They don't look alike, but when the little girl cries she sounds exactly like Madeline.

She's on her way to visit her daughter when someone clamps her forearm tightly and tugs her into an on-call room. Her squeal is stifled by a large hand, and she tenses for a moment before recognizing the subtle hint of Derek's aftershave in the air.

"Sorry," he says with the wide, silly grin he wears on rare occasions as he removes his hand from her mouth. "I thought you might want to _not _be the subject of today's gossip, though."

Meredith lets forth a laugh and realizes that particular cadence hasn't been heard in a while – laughter is difficult to summon when your daughter is dying. Now she soaks up the hope pouring from Derek's eyes and sighs in pleasure as he moves to kiss her.

Almost as soon as their lips meet, she is surprised at her hunger for him, because even though they're high on jubilance and sex has been the last thing on her mind ever since Madeline was admitted, her body still needs him. As if he can sense her desperation, Derek quickly divests her of her scrub top as he pushes her back onto the thin mattress of the on-call room bed.

They continue to kiss, tongues tangling and hands exploring as articles of clothing are lost until she is lying bare beneath him, her chest expanding as his contracts. He smiles down at her for a minute and then scoots to the edge of the bed, his hand combing the floor for something.

He comes up with a black velvet box.

"Don't worry," he laughs when he sees her terrified, deer-caught-in-headlights expression. "I'm not asking you to marry me – yet. I know with Madeline being sick and all this isn't the right time. But Mer, I love you. I want to get married and stay together through everything until we're old and wrinkly. And I want everyone to know you're mine."

"So," he opens the box to reveal a simple, delicate gold ring with five tiny diamonds spaced intermittently around it in equal intervals. "This is a promise ring."

"Uh, Derek?" she giggles, wonder if he somehow gotten into the morphine. "It's a little late for that, you know …"

"Not that kind of promise ring, silly," he laughs. "This one means, well, that we'll love each other forever and that we belong to each other, because you're not ready to get married but I don't want to go another day knowing you could come to your senses and let some other guy whisk you away. So … please wear it."

Meredith accepts the ring gingerly and tries, under Derek's intense scrutiny, to comprehend what this means. It's a white picket fence instead of freedom, a promise instead of a hope, commitment instead of expectation.

"I don't want this to just be about Madeline getting better," she says slowly. "I'm happy, _so_ happy, but -"

"That's not what this is," Derek insists. "I've had this forever, since right before Madeline relapsed. This is about you and me and you having our child and braiding her hair even when you've been on-call for a day and a half. This is about hair that smells like lavender and tiny, ineffectual fists and real life fairytales. This is about us."

She wants to hate him for being able to do this to her, but she can't, so she slides the cool, glimmering band onto her finger and kisses him, slow and keep, the gold throwing rainbows as he makes love to her and their daughter's fate hangs in the balance.

~*~

Mark still remembers the day he first held his daughter, staring at the tiny being with limbs like fragile leaves and lips like flower petals. He didn't think, back then, that it was possible for anyone to look as small as Sommer Lydia Sloan did in his arms that day, but today he is proved wrong.

The gurney dwarfs the little girl, her shock of wheat hair rippling down the back of the hospital gown that hangs on bony shoulders. Addison helped her into it, snapped the snaps and arranged small arms while Sommer looked on in confusion, too bewildered to even complain at the undesirable state of dress. She hasn't eaten since the night before, and first her tears expressed her frustration as Brenner ate a cookie shaped like a snowflake, then her red face expressed anger, and now she looks resigned.

He wishes he could explain it to her, but he's tried, numerous times, and she doesn't ever understand.

"Why, Dada?"

"We have to help Madeline get better. Don't you want to?"

"But I'm hungry."

"I'm sorry, baby, but you can't have any food."

"Daddy! _Why_?"

They're wheeling her towards the OR and it's all he can do not to put his hands on the moving bed and stop it, say wait, she doesn't deserve this, it isn't right. He and Addison are making this decision, not her, and they're making it for themselves, for Derek and Meredith and Madeline, but not for Sommer, the little girl sitting lost on the too-large bed, toenails painted fairy pink.

Her wide blue orbs, the color of earliest dawn, are killing him. He doesn't know what to say to her to make it all better this time.

"Sommer?" Addison says softly as they come to a halt, Derek standing ready in scrubs and his signature scrub cap, smiling down at Sommer as if he's known her for her whole life. Meredith is rocking Faye gently as he and Addison focus on their oldest girl. "You know Mommy and Daddy love you, right?"

Her small, porcelain head tilts forward in a slight nod before big, diamond tears fall down her cheeks. She doesn't know exactly what's happening, but she's picking up on the tense atmosphere, the adults' tight expressions, the fear in her brother's face as he eyes doors he is forbidden to pass.

"We love you so much," Addison chokes, stroking a few stray blonde wisps from Sommer's face, "and we would never, ever let anything bad happen to you, okay?"

"Momma?" his daughter responds as Mark places a hand on the small of Addison's back, steadying her. "Will you stay with me?"

He has to watch as the love of his life looks into the face of the child they created together and blatantly lies. "Of course, sweetie," she whispers, bending to hug Sommer once more.

"Mommy?" Brenner interjects from behind them. "Why is Sunny crying?"

"She's … she's just … a little …" Addison stumbles, clearly distraught over her lie.

"You wanna see her, bud?" Mark says quickly, tucking his hands under his son's armpits and spinning him up beside his sister. They are mirror images, the likenesses stunning, although they are of course not identical. Brenner throws his arms around his twin without reserve, hugging her in the sincere way only young children can.

"'S okay," he assures her. "Daddy says we can rent Mario Kart at the hotel, and you can be Peach."

"But you always beat me," Sommer wails.

"I won't. I won't beat you. I promise," Brenner vows. "And we can watch Sleepin' Beauty and Enchanted and lots of girl movies. Just please don't cry."

"Dr. Shepherd?" a nurse inquires, already in a surgical gown. "We're ready."

"Bye, baby," he whispers into skin that smells of her strawberry body wash. He lingers, but the instant is too short, all too soon Derek is pulling the gurney away, he is automatically lifting his son off of it, wrapping an arm around Addison's shoulders, half comforting, half restraining.

~*~

She usually hates rain but she's willing to forgive the sky for crying today, because it is doing what she can't, sitting alone in the lobby tracking trails of moisture. If she cries it will escalate into sobbing, which will wake Faye who she removed from the car seat in a desperate bid for comfort. Plus she's pretty sure the tall blonde resident and the one that looks like a puppy dog are spying on her.

Mark took Brenner somewhere to calm him, she isn't sure where, but his crying eventually garnered glares from others in the open lobby, so he parted, leaving her only with a quick kiss on the forehead. She keeps touching the spot with the pad of her index finger.

She lied to her daughter; put her at the mercy of needles that will be inserted into the iliac crest for precious marrow, and still she doesn't know if what she did was right.

A flash of cornflower catches her eye and Meredith smiles demurely as she sees Addison and settles opposite her. They are silent, and at another time she might have put the young resident out of her misery, asked after the question hovering on her lips, but today she can't do much of anything.

"You said there were two sides to every story," Meredith begins hesitantly, and she can't summon the will to tell the other woman all she wants is to be left here seeped in worry that she has failed her daughter. "What's yours?"

"Nice ring."

"Yeah, Derek and I … we're not engaged or anything," she explains quickly. "It's just kind of … I don't know. It says that we're together."

"Mmm."

"Look, you obviously meant what you said and if you were going to say it in the first place, you owe me an explanation. You might as well tell me because we've got time to kill and I know you were kicked out of the OR gallery for criticizing the anesthesiologist over the intercom thing in there and I'm sorry, but I can't let you back in."

Addison merely stares. Meredith is young, still, and she never did anything to warrant being dragged into this mess. She'd just loved Derek Shepherd, exactly as Addison had once upon a time, a man who hid complications behind his storybook prince smile.

"Derek, Mark and I," she sighs, "met in med school. Mark was the cocky, gorgeous playboy; Derek was the sweet, attentive lab partner. Mark hit on me and asked me to go to the nearest bar with him. Derek said I was beautiful and even though it was kind of silly, since we'd just met; he wanted to marry me someday. I was more attracted to Mark, but he scared me, so …"

"… so you chose the safer option. I don't blame you," Meredith assures her quickly. "I mean Derek's obviously a great guy and we … uh … call him McDreamy here, and Mark, well, even now I can picture what he was like."

"I put my dream of having a family and settling down ahead of love," Addison continues. "Not that I didn't love Derek, I did, but Mark could just look at me and I'd get this feeling. But he slept with a new girl every other night. And Derek and I were happy."

"So he proposed, you said yes, you got married and lived happily ever after until …"

"Until I slept with Mark." Meredith looks surprised at the certainty and frankness that lace her voice as she makes the statement. "It wasn't my proudest moment, but Mark and I fell in love. He was there, always, taking me out to dinner, getting me flowers and saying they were from Derek even though we both knew they weren't. Derek was just … never there."

"What do you mean? He's always home with Madeline when I'm working and -"

Addison massages her temples, wondering how to phrase this. "I'm not saying he's not a good father, or a good boyfriend, or whatever. We just weren't meant to be together, in the end. Our relationship became strained, we argued about kids, work, the plumbing, everything, until one day he just stopped. He spent all his time at the hospital and sent Mark on the dates he skipped. And one night … I was lonely and falling for him, and once you've started down that slope it's almost impossible to stop. Derek left without another word. I went to Mark."

"And then you got pregnant," Meredith finishes for her.

~*~

_Nausea built inside her and she couldn't decide which was more debilitating: the child causing her body to produce hormones to make her feel this way, the fact that she just almost had an abortion, or that when she walked into Mark's apartment the day before he was sleeping with some slutty nurse from the hospital. It was a close race._

_Swallowing forcefully, she pulled herself up the steps of the brownstone, thinking only of the comfortable couch that awaited her inside. She hadn't slept in her and Derek's bed since that fateful night he left. It amazed her that she could sink lower than that hellish night, but now she was pregnant with Mark's baby while he slept with half of New York City._

_Addison unlocked the door and stepped inside, immediately alarmed as her eyes adjusted, revealing a figure standing casually in her kitchen. A second later, she identified him as Mark._

"_Addie," he breathed in relief, hurrying from the kitchen into the hallway to embrace her tightly, an action that had previously made her feel protected and loved as her heart pressed up against his. But now she pushed him off. "Where were you? I tried your cell a couple times after the surgery, but you didn't answer." _

"_I was at a clinic," she stated dully, voice reflecting the aching numbness inside. "An abortion clinic."_

_She didn't think she'd ever seen the blood drain from someone's face so fast and in the end she had to look away from his pewter eyes, swimming with actual tears, something she didn't think she'd ever used in conjunction with Mark Sloan. "You … you didn't … the baby …"_

"_The baby is fine, Mark," she snapped, hating how his broken look forced her to give in to him again. "I couldn't do it, okay? You sleep with everything that moves and I couldn't get rid of your baby."_

_He had her in his arms faster than she could blink, reminding her with a tight embrace of all the reasons she loved him, how his heart housed her love, for better or for worse. Of picnics in Central Park and flowers on days patients died and even chocolates the second he sensed PMS. He was there emotionally, but cheating on her physically, while Derek had been tangible but obsessed with work. She couldn't decide which was better, so she pushed Mark off._

"_Don't. I need you to go," she said coldly._

"_What? But Addie …"_

"_Go home, Mark. Get out of my life. I trusted you not to hurt me, not to break me, because someday I won't be able to put myself together again. But you did. You don't love me, at least not enough to be monogamous for any length of time. So just … go. You aren't cut out for three a.m. feedings anyway."_

"_I'm not ready? You're the one who won't talk about him, who pretends everything's fine, who won't let me love you. I love you, Addison, and it scares me because I sure as hell have never been in love before but I love you."_

"_Get out."_

"_I won't abandon my kid," he told her as he stepped around her to the front door. "And I messed up and I'm sorry but that doesn't mean I don't love you. When you're ready, you know where to find me."_

~*~

"Wow, I …"

"I know it's incredibly screwed up, all of it," Addison tells the younger woman. "And I know it's hard to take in. My point is, I guess … that everyone is acting like one night of illicit passion is worse than years of indifference and absence. And it's not."

"I should have known," Meredith whispers hoarsely. "I mean, no one's that perfect, and even if they were, they wouldn't want _me_. He never mentioned any of that, none of it, when I asked about New York and his past. He was just a blank slate."

"Look, Meredith, you seem like a good person and a good doctor and -" she halts midsentence. Derek is approaching, a grim look on his face, with a shorter, smaller surgeon with coffee colored skin, and Addison's heart plummets, her breath catches in her throat. One time Mark chocked on one of the kids' Jolly Ranchers from Halloween and now she knows how it feels to gasp desperately for air.

"What happened?"

"Addison, I'm …"

"_What happened_?!"

"She's fine now, but …"

* * *

**Hehe sorry, another cliffhanger. But I hope you liked the chapter! Also, please check out our community Maddyson for some really good fic!**


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